Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  I asked Miss Ainsleigh if she would intrust the will to my keeping until the following morning. She gave me the sweetest and most confiding of smiles as she put the document into my hands.

  “Do exactly what seems best to yourself,” she said; “I am sure you will only do what is right and honourable. If you find that the will is really valid, please come to the Hall to-morrow morning, and we will tell papa all about it — between us.”

  And thus we parted; I conducted her to her pretty little carriage, and held her dear hand in mine just a little longer than usual as I bade her good-night.

  “If you should ever come to be poor, Barbara,” I said, “you will at least know how dearly you are beloved.”

  This I could not resist saying. For the first time in my life I had called her Barbara. I felt myself blushing in the darkness; but she did not reprove me.

  I lit the reading-lamp on my father’s office-table, and lay in wait for his return. He came at half-past ten, elated by a final “double, treble, and the rub.” I sent my mother up to the drawing-room, where the girls were too full of Barbara’s troubles to care about hearing the menu of the friendly dinner, and I marched my father into the office, where we sat down side by side, and examined the last will and testament of Lucas Ainsleigh.

  My father thought as I did. He remembered the names of the two witnesses — both had been old serrants of the testator’s, and both were dead.

  “If they had not been exceptionally stupid they would have taken some means to further the carrying-out of their old master’s wishes,” said my father. “But it is just possible, by the way, that Lucas Ainsleigh did not tell them the nature of the document they attested. Some men are so fatally cautious.” The result of our conversation was my appearance at the Hall early next morning, with the dreadful document in my pocket. Barbara came out of her pretty morning-room as the servant admitted me. We stopped on the threshold of Mr. Ainsleigh’s study, whispering together for a few minutes before we went in, and it happened somehow that Barbara’s hand remained in mine while we whispered. I loved her so dearly, I was so sorry for her sorrow, I was so glad to think that her poverty would bring her nearer to me; there was, in short, such a conflict of emotion raging in my breast, that I may surely be forgiven if, in this tremendous crisis, I forgot to release Miss Ainsleigh’s hand.

  We went into the study, where the perfume of Russia leather was almost oppressive, and told our story between us, Barbara kneeling by her father’s chair, and caressing the thin white hand that hung listless by his side while we broke the intelligence to him. I never saw anyone more weak and helpless than Mr. Ainsleigh proved himself on this occasion. He seemed almost stunned by the blow.

  “I am afraid I have impoverished the estate, Frederick,” he said. “You see the fancies of a bookworm are expensive; and, thinking myself a rich man, I have been somewhat reckless. I should scarcely like to tell you the money I gave for my Decameron. And it was I who bought the Shakespeare — you may remember, perhaps — that was sold at Willis and Sotheron’s three years ago. It is true that at the worst I could sell my books, but it would be hard to part with them. Marcus Aurelius sold all his possessions for the benefit of the State, during that period in which the Germanic war and the pestilence at Rome combined to impoverish the treasury; but he got a good deal of the property back again, nor do we hear of rare manuscripts among the treasures he resigned. And I do not pretend to the nobility of mind displayed by that generous Antonine.”

  The bibliomaniac looked round at the grand old folios with a dismal sigh.

  “We need not talk about selling your library yet, sir,” I said cheerily. “My father and I are agreed that the will is a good one, but we have yet to discover whether there is anyone alive to claim under it.”

  This was a new view of the subject, but it did not inspire much hope in the minds of Barbara and her father.

  “My cousin was my junior by some years,” said Mr. Ainsleigh; “she married early, and is likely to have left a large family, — even supposing her to be no longer living.”

  “The law has only to deal with facts, you see, sir,” I answered, with unabated cheerfulness. It was, indeed, very easy for me to assume this lively and consoling tone; for my heart was dancing with joy. I knew that Barbara loved me. A very few hours of family trouble seemed to have made us more intimate than a year and a half of croquet-parties and “gentle gales.”

  After some little discussion, it was agreed that an advertisement should be drawn up by my father, requesting Margaret Dashwood, or her heirs, executors, and assigns, to communicate with him immediately, personally or by letter; and further offering to reward any person who should produce evidence of the lady’s decease.

  “I don’t think that will be much use,” Mr. Ainsleigh said. “If Mrs. Dashwood had come back to England, she would surely have come to this place, where she was born and brought up.”

  “We cannot be quite sure of that,” I replied. “The lady may have returned under circumstances of extreme poverty, and may have been too proud to exhibit her altered status in this place.”

  “True, true,” sighed Mr. Ainsleigh.

  “If there should be no response to that advertisement after it has been inserted a dozen times, on alternate days, we may fairly conclude that neither Mrs. Dashwood nor her heirs are to be found in this country; and I will, with your permission, start immediately for America, with a view to finding them, or sufficient evidence of their decease.”

  “You will go to America?” cried Barbara and her father simultaneously.

  They both looked at me as the Mends of Theseus may have looked at him when he announced his intention of tackling the Minotaur; but I answered their looks of wonder with a smile.

  “Crossing the Atlantic is a very small business nowadays,” I said, “thanks to Cunard. I shall start before the end of January; and in the mean time all you have to do is to make yourself comfortable and wait the issue of events. Things may not be so bad as you think, sir.”

  I felt a courage that was almost desperation as I watched Barbara kneeling by her father’s side, and comforting him with tender looks and sweet little half-whispered words and the light caressing touch of her fair hands. Ah, what could not a man achieve for such a woman as that! I felt myself equal to support not only a wife but a father-in-law. Yes, and to find money for Willis and Sotheron into the bargain.

  Before I left the Hall that day Barbara and I were solemnly pledged to each other. A detestable man-servant came in with a coal-scuttle just as my sweet girl was melted into tears by the fervour of my devotion. And O, in what a leisurely manner the wretch renewed the fire, and how we stood, self-conscious as unconvicted felons, while he trifled with the poker, and showed himself neat to punctiliousness in his arrangement of the shovel and tongs!

  “And do you really mean to say that you are not afraid of my poverty?” asked Barbara, when the execrable creature had gone.

  “I mean to say that I was very much afraid of your wealth,” I replied. “I should never have dared to ask the heiress of Ainsleigh Hall to be my wife. It is only the prospect of a change in your circumstances that gives me courage.”

  I doubt if my life can give me a happier Christmas than that which followed my interview with Barbara. My father’s advertisement appeared three times a week in the second column of the Times Supplement; but there was no response worthy even of investigation. Mr. Ainsleigh waited the result with suppressed anxiety; while Barbara and I did our best to support his spirits and to restrain our own. He received my offer for his daughter’s hand with resignation, — as if it had been the last stroke inflicted by the Nemesis of his house.

  “I will not deny that I had hoped a more brilliant destiny for her,” he murmured. “She is now but a pauper’s daughter, and cannot be too grateful for your disinterested affection.”

  I left Liverpool on the 17th of January, and my business upon the other side occupied the greater part of a year. With infinite labour, I hunte
d out the history of Margaret Dashwood and her husband, together with the history of the two children who had been born to them, both of whom had died unmarried, — one an infant, the other a soldier in the late Civil War. Death had settled all claims that might have been asserted under the will found in the muniment chest. I went back to England late in the autumn, carrying with me ample evidence of the decease of Mrs. Dashwood and her heirs. She died without a will, and on her death the property would have lapsed naturally to her father’s eldest nephew.

  Barbara and I are to be married early in the spring. I nobly offered to release her from her engagement; she, in a spirit as noble, refused to be released. Her father is resigned and even happy. There is another Decameron to be sold at Willis and Sotheron’s in the coming spring, of an older and rarer edition than the large-paper copy he has cherished so fondly hitherto; and whether he looks forward with most anxiety to the loss of his daughter or the acquisition of the Decameron is an enigma I shall not attempt to solve.

  We are to live at the old Hall, whence I am to trudge to my desk at the office daily. The little preliminary discussions of affairs between my father and Mr. Ainsleigh have revealed the fact that the latter gentleman has contrived to muddle away a great deal of money, and is by no means a rich man. If Mrs. Dashwood or her heirs had been alive to claim the estate, his position would have been a very miserable one.

  The good people of Orpingdean, however, believe that I am going to marry a rich heiress, and no doubt have a great deal to say among themselves on the subject of my good fortune.

  HOW I HEARD MY OWN WILL READ

  IT was wrong to be led away by Scavenger. Scavenger was the third favourite for the St. Leger; and a sporting prophet of some celebrity, Mr. Mooney Dooem, of Little Hocus-street, London-road, Manchester, assured me, for the moderate consideration of three shillings and sixpence in postage stamps, that if I wanted to do a good thing for myself, the way to set about it was to back Scavenger with all the loose cash I could lay my hands on.

  Now, I am not a sporting man, and I don’t know much of horseflesh. If I had met Scavenger drawing a parcels-delivery van, my sense of the fitness of things would not have been jarred by the circumstance; nevertheless, I like a race. Yes, I am passionately devoted to a race. I make a point of taking Mrs. Pettifer to Epsom and Hampton races every spring. I like champagne and lobster-salad. I like to wear a green veil, and to talk to admiring servant-girls at open windows on the dusty road. I used to like chaffing the toll-keeper — one feels so witty in a barouche and pair. I like having my fortune told. I like coming home in the evening with my mind in a pleasing state of uncertainty as to whether it is the day before yesterday or the day after to-morrow; and I like finishing the evening with iced punch, another lobster, and a “frienly rub-r-r-r.”

  So I backed Scavenger. On Saturday I gave six to five on him, on Monday I gave five to four on him, and on Tuesday my partner Peck (Peck and Pettifer, solicitors, Gray’s-inn) made me give him seven to three on that abominable brute*. Peck always backs the field. He is a cautious man, and never means to many. He makes unpleasant puns about not wanting to be hen-Pecked. I have laughed at that doleful joke so long from sheer habit, that if I heard it in a funeral sermon I believe I should burst into a loud guffaw; and I give you my honour I never thought it funny in the whole course of my life. I am rather afraid of Peck, if the truth mast be told, for I think he looks down upon me. I remember once, after a jovial night we had together, going to the office next morning with a labyrinth of streaky red marks all over my face; and when I told him that I had awoke and found the cat walking over my face, he looked as if he didn’t believe me.

  I backed Scavenger; and then it struck me that as Peck was going down to Doncaster for the St. Leger week, I really ought to go too. I could afford the week’s holiday quite as well as Peck, though I was not a single man. So I told Mrs. Pettifer that I must run down to Yorkshire to wait on one of our best clients, who was going to marry his eldest daughter (to somebody else of course), and who required my professional services for the preparation of the settlements. Now I suppose Yorkshire sounded rather vague, for Mrs. Pettifer asked immediately what part of Yorkshire I was going to. I replied, as immediately, Slitherem-on-the-Dwingey. Now I don’t know of any town answering to that name in Yorkshire; but that is no reason there should not be such a place, and I thought the address would be reassuring to Mrs. P.; and so it was. Unfortunately, she wanted me to write it down. I could not have spelt it if you had offered me a million of money; so I told my esteemed Julia Maria that I would write to her the minute I reached Slitherem; and so departed.

  That brute Scavenger was nowhere, and my loose cash was jingling in the pockets of the prudent Peck half an hour after the great race. The cup was won by an outsider of obscure lineage, a rawboned chestnut animal with one white fore-leg, which made him look as if he had dressed himself in a hurry and had forgotten to put on his other stocking. Peck had backed him, and came away from the course with his leathern pocket-book distended, as in a dropsy, with bank-notes. I hated him with a deep and undying hatred; but as he asked me to dine with him at the Reindeer, I went.

  He is a brute (perhaps I have said that before), but he is, on the whole, a generous brute, and he gave me a very good dinner. They know what a bottle of champagne is at the Reindeer, I can tell you; they can send you up something very creditable in the way of sparkling hock; and if you’ve a fancy for a bottle of old madeira, such as might rival Captain Cook for sea-voyages, don’t be afraid to order it. We had some of that madeira with our fish. We didn’t go into “sparkling” till the next course came in; and when we were tired of champagne, we went in for burgundy. I think it was some time in the fourth course that I was rather annoyed by the very peculiar conduct of a partridge. It began by his sliding about my plate, and persistently eluding my fork; he then dipped — yes, this malicious bird absolutely dipped down, plate and all, as if he were taking a sensation header, or going through a trap in the table-cloth. Next he dodged me — yes, dodged me from side to side; concealed himself behind the bread-sauce to avoid my knife; till on my making a final effort to pinion him with my fork, he took to himself wings and flew away — into Peck’s shirt-front. I believe this gave rise to high words between Peck and me; but I know we afterwards shook hands; and there was something so really touching in our reconciliation that I wept. It was foolish of me to wipe my eyes upon my dinner-napkin, because I thereby introduced foreign particles in the way of crumbs and mustard into those optics, which injured my sight for, the rest of the evening; but Peck said my conduct did equal honour to my head and my heart. I think it was in the course of a speech he said this; and I believe he paid me some very high compliments on my professional capacity and unblemished integrity. I felt grateful to him, though he pronounced it “feshnl cpcty” and “nblmshed tgrity,” and I didn’t quite catch his meaning. This, of course, was after the cloth was removed, and we were taking our port and walnuts.

  I don’t know what brought Julia Maria (Mrs. Pettifer) so vividly to my recollection at this time, but the image of that injured woman did recur to me, and my feelings got the better of me. I bad not acted well towards the wife of my bosom. I had not kept my promise; I had never written to her from Slitherem -on - the - Dwingey; partly because I had not been there, and partly because I did not believe there was any place of that name in the map of England.

  How we came to think about the theatre, I don’t know; perhaps it was because we had received a circular from the manager of that place of entertainment, perhaps it was the landlord who suggested the idea, perhaps it was the waiter; at any rate, there was Peck standing with his back to the fireplace (O, what had he been doing to himself to make himself so indistinct and undulating?) — there was Peck, looking at his watch, and saying that it was only half-past nine, and that we might as well go and look in at the theatre.

  I don’t know whether earthquakes are indigenous to Doncaster, but that town was certainly agitated by some c
onvulsion of nature on this particular evening; and as the inhabitants appeared quite undisturbed by the phenomenon, I conclude that it was quite a common occurrence.

  As to that man who told us the nearest way to the theatre, I hope he may come to an untimely end. Nearest way indeed! “Bear to your left down the street opposite, and then turn sharp round the first corner you come to, into a narrow lane.” I did bear to my left, whereby I bore right into a horse’s mouth, and received a torrent of abuse from a stable-boy riding the quadruped. The lad had been drinking — they will do it at these times! — so I forgave him. Then, as to turning sharp round the comer, did I not turn sharp round the comer, and did I not do the bridge of my nose a serious injury against the brickwork of the corner house? I have never quite understood how we ultimately made our way into the theatre; but I think it was side-ways, because I know something seemed to be taking me into the Market-place, which, as everybody knows, is adjacent to that building. Peck took me into a box near the stage. Peck is a play-going man, quotes Shakespeare and Maddison Morton in his conversation.

  I take my family to see the pantomimes every Christmas; beyond that I am not a connoisseur. The play was Hildebrand the Avenger, or the Spectre of the Mount Peck said it was trash; I thought it interesting. Mrs. Hildebrand was a widow, Hildebrand having been murdered at some remote period. She wore black-cotton velvet, ornamented with spiky embellishments in crochet-work. I knew it was cotton velvet, because it looked brown, and clung around her queenly form as she walked. She also wore pearls in her hair — the correct costume I daresay of widows in the time of Hildebrand the A. She was rather a big woman, and she might have been younger; but she was a model of conjugal propriety; and O, didn’t she annihilate Hildebrand’s bad brother in yellow boots, when he revealed a guilty passion which he had chee-yerished — he pronounced it “chee-yerished” — for a space of some ten or twenty years! Now I should have enjoyed this dramatic entertainment very much, — for I felt a strong interest in the female Hildebrand, and I rather admired Yellow-boots, though he was a consummate villain, and had three supernumerary consummate villains, dressed in green baize and bluchers, always ready to carry out any scheme of a criminal description, — but there was a virtuous steward, who talked a great deal more than anybody else, and who seemed to obtain all the applause. I don’t know how he came to be connected with the partridge that had so aggravated me at dinner; but he — the virtuous steward — was nearly related to that malignant bird, and from the moment he spied me in the corner of the boxes, he made a dead-set at me. Yes, at me! The abominable and abusive language he used, I shall never forget. O, ah! he might pretend he meant it for Yellow-boots (the noble-er Count-er, as he called him); but when he said that “the man who didn’t do so and so deserved the most ignominious treatment,” it was at me he levelled his denunciations, and I felt myself the focus of a whole houseful of indignant eyes. I told Peck of this fact, but he said he had not observed it. Peck never observes anything. I asked my partner if there was anything in my appearance calculated to attract the attention of that obnoxious steward; and P. said I did look rather pale. Suppose I did; was that the virtuous steward’s business or mine, pray? and was I to ask his permission before I turned pale? I felt pale, and I rather fancied I looked interesting: that black ballet-girl with the eyes — I mean that ballet-girl with the black eyes — thought so, to judge by the way she stared at me. Well now, who do you suppose that virtuous steward was? The most experienced playgoer would have failed to fathom that secret That virtuous steward was Hildebrand himself, who had been cleaning his own plate in his own butler’s pantry, and waiting on his own wife, and depriving himself of all the comforts and privileges of his station for ten years; for the sake of keeping his eye on Yellow-boots, who had intended to murder him, but had foolishly intrusted the carrying out of the business to one of the supernumerary villains, who had evidently made a regular fiasco of it. Now, was not that idea charmingly original? I’m sure, when the virtuous steward threw off a white beard and a black cloak (how ever did he clean his plate or draw his corks in that cloak?), you might have heard a pin drop. I did distinctly hear the wire springs of the beard when it fell on the stage. And then there was such a burst of applause! And then poor Yellow-boots (he was a handsome young man, and would have been graceful if he had only been more settled in his ideas as to what he should do with his arms) was led away by his own minions, with a view to instantaneous execution. Perhaps he had been behindhand with their wages, for they really seemed glad to do it.